


But I'm Not A Cheerleader!

by spacemagic



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bring it On (2000) - Freeform, But I'm A Cheerleader (1999) - Freeform, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Internalised Homophobia, Kyoshi Island, Lesbian Ty Lee (Avatar), cheerleading
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-15 20:08:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28569771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacemagic/pseuds/spacemagic
Summary: All good things come to an end, all caged birds fly home, eventually. After travelling the world for three years in the circus, seventeen-year-old runaway acrobat Ty Lee has been found out, caught, and shipped to a disciplinary boarding school for 'unruly girls' on the cold and remote Kyoshi Island.The worst part? She has to join the cheerleading team.[A Ty Lee/Suki Modern Cheerleading AU inspired by Bring It On & But I'm Not A Cheerleader]
Relationships: Suki/Ty Lee (Avatar)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 20





	1. grey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MousselineSerieuse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MousselineSerieuse/gifts).



> despite the title & summary, this is actually more of a fusion with Bring It On (2000) than it is But I'm A Cheerleader (1999), which is more a thematic touch. it's titled after the latter because 1. gay, and 2. I am a sucker for an reference 3. I know which one my audience is more likely to recognise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **warnings:** internalised homophobia & misogyny.
> 
>  **references:**  
>  Yokoya – another name for Kyoshi Island/Kyoshi Island village, established in the Kyoshi novels.  
> Cuju - an early chinese form of football, popular in the Tang and Song dynasties.
> 
> the try-outs scene references the moves Missy makes in [the following scene from Bring It On](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6F6sglyV8Pc), which I think is worth seeing. warning for the d-slur in that clip at 2:20 tho.

It wasn’t supposed to be _a thing._ I mean, if I’m honest, I didn’t even really _like_ Suki at first. Like, she was pretty enough, if poster girls for the pretty girl-next-door were your thing. You know, the sort of girl who was just a fraction out of your league, but let you drive her around in your beat-up van anyways, and listened to your weird mixtape and told you that she _actually_ liked it, the sort of girl you’d get just a little nostalgic for and think of the smell of the polish they used on the gymnasium floor, somehow, even though you always hated gym class, and made you want to retrace the steps of your summer dance even though you swore you’d never set foot in a school again. Sometimes, you’d swear you could still catch the faint whiff of her shampoo on that scarf of hers you swiped (which smelled of strawberry – to boys, it’s _always_ strawberry, even when it isn’t).

The weird thing is, she seemed genuine, and that’s what I didn’t quite get. I remember when we first met: I’d been paraded out in front of a classroom of disgruntled girls standing in front of little wooden kneeling-desks. Tall girls, short girls, broad-shouldered girls who’d clearly been swimming laps around the island, bare-faced girls with skin so greasy you could serve take-out on it, girls who wore rolled their skirts up and tied their belts with complicated knots you’d find out of a camping manual like some kind of secret clique code, all in identical blue-and-green uniform, all some degree of unimpressed with me, expressions veering between disinterest, distaste, and what seemed to be an intense dislike at the girl in pretty pink stood in front of them. I did what I always do: smile, and smile again, like it means nothing. 

Suki, of course, was different. She was different from the start, and that’s really how I should have known. When she moved in front of the class, and gave me her “Hello, I’m Suki, your Class President and the Captain of the Warriors,” spiel, it was with a smile that was more than simply polite. I mean, you have to laugh, she was Class president _and_ Team Captain? Really? And yet the way she smiled: it was proud and it was _daring._ I’d offered a grin, told her I couldn’t wait to fit in, like I was putting myself in another box again and not a girl lost on the other side of the world again. She’d told me she’d be looking forward to it. And I’d expected it to end at that, but then she started nudging me once, and then twice, and then time-to-time, checked in when I lingered a moment too long after class, or hadn’t skipped my way down the hallway to class, when I thought I was alone. You know, she gave me all the _How are yous_ and the _How are you settling ins?,_ the classic sort of questions you tell lies to. I think the Director of Studies felt sorry for me, knowing my ‘situation’, and she put her up to it. All this being buddy-buddy. But her smile was just awkward enough for you to believe it, just a little lopsided, a little too many teeth, and I really thought she cared, you know, just for a moment. Just for a moment, I almost felt bad for lying.

“Hey, I really hope the move to the academy hasn’t been a big adjustment,” she’d say, leaning against my desk. “You know, we’re really lucky to have you.”

“Oh, thank you – that’s _so_ sweet of you.” I said, with a smile made of plastic. “You know, it’s been great, actually, settling in.” 

I couldn’t imagine telling her how it actually had been. It hadn’t been pretty. When you’re whisked away from the big top lights strung up like stars in the sky, escorted by this guy in an overcoat and in steel capped boots that are just worn enough to say ‘ex-military, but it’s complicated’, to the other side of the Earth Kingdom on high-speed bullet train, and he hands you this brochure for _The Yokoya Academy for Girls_ with all these glossy pages of identical, green-uniformed, stern-faced girls, with the subheading: _Discipline, An Alternative Approach,_ are you supposed to be happy? Are you supposed to be overjoyed?

I tried to be happy. I tried to laugh when Mr. Ex-Military, who told me his name was Jee, spilled the strawberry and mango smoothie he’d bought for me over the glossy double-page spread, spilling pink all over the future, as we rushed from escalator to staircase to walkway with cracked screens advertising bottles of _Caldera Sunrise_ with models with burnt royal brown eyes that bored into you to a grey platform, where we missed our change, and had to wait in the soft rain, for hours. I tried to smile myself to sleep on the overnight bus that zig-zagged across the province, telling myself I was still travelling with the troupe, travelling like we wanted to put a pin in every corner of the map while the stars blinked softly outside, still waking up before the sun did, still with that comforting ache from no plush blankets or beds, knowing you were on the road, you’d woken up in a different place from where you started (for the last time). I tried to be happy, tried to remember the cadence of a brochure now covered in pink, that spoke like a song about an old manor perched on the crest of a hill on a green isle in the greying sea, looking out towards the misty horizon, that the myths say was cleft in two by a legendary Avatar (but it makes me think of a woman the size of a house cutting earth like you might crack open an egg), and I tried to throw myself into the poetry of it all, as we wandered down through Chin village, which was less of a village and more a collection of sad cottages painted the same colour and boarded-up ice cream parlours and tourist shops all shut for the winter and a rusting monument for a dead conqueror, but I felt nothing. I tried to smile, leaning against the metal railings of an empty waiting room, the sea hissing behind a pane of glass and pre-fab concrete, the sun barely able to break through the fog, but it was beginning to strain, so instead imagined that I was at the centre of a thunderstorm, and thought about how exciting that must be, to be carried away by the wind. Far from here. 

(The ferry wasn’t for five hours yet.)

When Jee expressed concern that I had been hanging from a railing for twenty-five minutes upside-down, I smiled so hard I thought my teeth would fall out, and told him it helped me clear my head. I laughed, and it was so airy, it could have been a breeze, and he looked at me like I was mad. He gave me cash to buy another smoothie. Strawberry flavour. I didn’t buy a smoothie, though. I rifled for half-an-hour through magazines in a dialect I could only half-read, then through postcards I wasn’t going to send at a kiosk playing classic Ember Island showtunes on a tin-can radio. I left, and wandered, until I found a phone booth whose door wasn’t kicked-in. I dialled the nine digit number scribbled in red marker on the plastic label (not machine washable) on the inside of my pale pink sneakers, my favourite pink sneakers that were the only thing that had lasted all the years, that were beginning to crease and crack along the sides from standing on the balls of my feet, and I waited. The phone rang. Hands coiled around the wire, and it wasn’t my little finger that curled around it like a charm. _Please pick up._ The phone rang. Grasping, a whole hand. _Please pick up. Just this once._ The dial tone kept repeating, and repeating. I pulled at the wire. _Please pick up, please, please pick up._

But this wasn’t a movie. The phone rang until I ran out of coins to slip into the machine. I checked my watch. Five thirty three in the morning, Caldera Standard Time. Maybe I should have known better than to expect anything. I returned to Jee with a smile, like nothing meant anything.

It’s just… I had tried to keep smiling, when I got off the boat and the sun felt faint like a ghost behind the rolling fog, I’d tried to keep my spirits up, when I put my pale pink sneakers that had lasted the years in a box not to be seen, and I tried to be excited, thinking about all the new girls I’d meet and all the new friends I’d make when they handed me a uniform that in the shape of the tall wooden statue that loomed out in the courtyard, but when I smiled, my mouth began to ache. I didn’t want to make friends. I wanted to run away again.

I looked at Suki. I still felt the ache.

“You know, I’ve gotten settled real quick, actually,” I lied. “It kinda surprised me, actually. People here are _so_ friendly!”

“That’s good,” said Suki. “I’m really glad, y’know… it can be tough to settle in. Given the circumstances that most people end up here.”

I nodded. ‘Course, most people’s parents did not hire ex-military trackers to escort their runaway daughters to correctional schools to discipline wayward young ladies, but what did I know? I was open to being surprised.

“And you can always come talk to me,” she added. “Y’know, if you’re having trouble with anything. Don’t be shy.”

“Oh! Um, great,” I said. “That’s great.”

That was the moment where I should have told her that I had to get to gym class early. 

“Hey, um,” Suki began, and her fingers reached forward, and touched the edge of my desk. I noticed she kept her nails trimmed short, painted a minty green, and the polish was just beginning to chip. “This may be a bit out-there, but… you know, we’re looking for new members for the team this year. Do you want to comw along to try-outs?”

My response was automatic.

“Oh, yeah. Sure!”

I said yes. Of course I said yes. I’d been trained to say ‘yes’. 

What threw me, though, what really threw me, was how… Suki, Class President Suki who wore her captain badge proud on her uniform, she suddenly just _beamed,_ really, this big wide smile, and it almost made me fluster, it was just so… like _who_ actually _smiles_ like that? All teeth, almost too many, but she didn’t seem to care, like she was actually… like it _meant_ something, almost. She was still smiling as she rattled off date and time and details, as she slapped a flyer onto my desk and swung out the door, a chunky sports bag casually flung over her shoulder, because she was running late to gym class, you see, and I had to stop myself rolling my eyes and giggling, because there was no one there who I could lean across a desk and whisper to: _is she for real?_

I don’t think I knew I felt about it all at first. I mean, yeah, the Head of Studies had made it crystal clear that I had a sports extra-curricular to fill somehow, y’know, school pride and team spirit and the sense of unity a uniform brings, all of that sorta gunk people like Suki would spout out in a team huddle speech without a hint of irony, so there wasn’t really much of a choice. Maybe I didn’t _really_ like Suki yet, not really, but I knew her, and I sure knew better than to join _the cuju team_ or anything, and spend my afternoons around the sort of girls who’d wrestle each other in a muddy field over a ball, the sort of girls who’d spend too long in a sweaty locker room getting all the dirt off their clothes.

No. Suki was safer. Suki wore unscented lip balm and ironed her uniform properly. Suki, who would only nudge me gently in the corridor with a small smile, and ask me if I was still down for the tryouts, was the best option. So I’d just smile sweetly, say something like, _oh, you bet!,_ like I’d practised since I was six years old, back when I was still learning to jump through hoops with matching ribbons in my hair, back when I was still learning that I had to be nothing but flexible.

I hadn’t meant to get this involved, of course.

“Ty Lee, yeah?” said a cross-eyed girl to Suki’s right, pursing her lips. “You need to fill the–”

“Already done it,” I said, with a bright little smile, dropping the paperwork onto the desk they’d set up like a banquet table in an empty gymnasium. “What do you need?”

“Well,” said a girl to Suki’s left, who looked like the air had been sucked straight out of her cheeks. “You could start with your standing back tuck, for one.”

Really, I’d intended on flubbing at least one of the moves. A little stumble here, an uneven exit there, a slightly forced performance. 

_“Wow._ Okay,” said the girl to Suki’s right. The girl to Suki’s left blinked rapidly, and scribbled something quick on a notepad. “That’s a perfect landing. Um. So, could you do a standing handspring back tuck?”

I’d intended on being nothing special, too. Fading out of the limelight, into the background, long enough that my parents wouldn’t care if I stowed away in a cargo hauler all the way to Ba Sing Se. I’d be eighteen soon enough. I’d play along, just as much as I needed to.

“Okay. Wow. Um, nailed that one as well. Alright. Cool, so, maybe we’ll just move on, unless you have a performance in mind for us–”

“Wait, Yuka.” Suki, who had been watching this all wordlessly, stopped her with a wave of her hand. “I want to see a few more moves. Something that’s a challenge.” She lifted her chin – like she wanted to catch my eye, or something. “If that’s alright with you, yeah?”

I could have refused. Or I could have messed it up, just enough to fit, and slotted right in like the missing puzzle piece they told me I was. I could have become part of the background decor, part of a seven piece porcelain set. I could have become who my parents always wanted me to be, in a forest green uniform.

“I’d like a challenge.”

Suki leaned forward, a hand on her chin, a sweet little smile beginning to grow on her face. She hadn’t taken her eyes off me yet. 

“Front handspring, step out, round off, back handspring, round off, back handspring, full twisting layout. Can you do all of that?”

I blinked. That was _a surprise._

“I – Um, I think so!”

Suki tilted her head. The smile vanished.

“You sure, Ty Lee?”

It sounded genuine, that was the thing. Like I actually had a choice. That was when I really took a good look at her, for the first time. I took in the shape of her face properly: the curve of her jaw, the curl of her mouth, the shape of her eyes and a colour dark enough to fall into, the little freckles that dotted her cheeks, as well as the acne scars, and the eyebrows that hadn’t been plucked in seventeen years, that maybe, some other girls might call ugly. I didn’t like her, not really, I’d tell people later, when I wasn’t thinking about all the different ways a smile could spread across her lips, I’d say she was too much of a priss, something I knew already wasn’t quite true. Too by-the-book, I’d say, through a smile. Too proud.

“Absolutely,” I said.

I think at that moment, I knew I didn’t want to fit in. I wanted to stand out.

And also, I wanted her to watch.

When I landed on my feet, the other girls all looked at me wide-eyed, like they’d too, seen me for the very first time. They'd scramble for excuses later: tell her, in a whisper that was just loud enough, that I thought too much of myself, or too little of them, tell her that the team has no space for fancy Caldera imports, or just simply tell her that I'm a bitch, and that I didn't know what hard work was. But I wasn’t looking at them. I was looking at Suki. Suki, who hadn’t taken her eyes off me for a second. Suki, whose smile was almost spilling from her lips, a grin wide and proud.

Maybe I wanted her to always look at me like this: like I was exciting. Maybe I really wanted to lean in close, when she came up to me, afterwards, the leftovers of a smile still all over her face, a shoulder just nudged against mine, lightly, before she leant against the wall and said:

“I knew there was something different about you.”

Maybe I wanted this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please enjoy the 'Ty Lee is a mean girl' agenda out in full here. i did not mean for it to happen, but you know, first person perspective really opens doors. had great fun plonking Jee into this (this man will always be frustrated by the whims of teenagers).
> 
> (there is an explanation for why there is cheerleading in the canonverse. it's coming next chapter, there's only so much worldbuilding I can dump at once)


	2. green

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Warriors prepare for Regionals, and Ty Lee paints her face for the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **warnings:** more internalised homophobia (that's just a constant for this fic really)
> 
> see end notes for **references**

I remember this serif font, stylised with this ‘we’re fancy, but not too fancy’ faux-elegance, italicised, strung across the first page of brochure I’d been handed and I’d discarded. _Find a community. Make connections. Build roots._ It was the first thing the Director of Studies had told me, too, in this austere office that probably belonged to some self-important sage four hundred years ago. I remember kneeling on a mat on the polished wood floor, Avatar Kyoshi’s war fans pinned to the wall, along with a few sparse black and white photos, framed behind glass. “We’re part of a community here,” the Director had said, and it had a hard edge like a warning, in the same way you might tell someone ‘There’s no ‘I’ in team’. What that actually translated to was spending a period a day doing ‘community work’: a gaggle of uneven girls following the groundskeeper, picking twigs off woodland footpaths and tending to gardens, grumbling about knees in the dirt, or maybe they’d be following the head cook’s exacting whims, washing pans of rice for the forty-fifth time, helping chop vegetables into cute little chunks and scrubbing and drying dishes like a factory conveyor belt. What that actually translated to was intensive language lessons first period each morning with a teacher in immaculate attush dress with long strings of shell-beads around her neck. What that actually translated to was mandatory extra-curriculars, and that meant Warriors practice thrice a week, bright and early, at the lawns where the wooden statue of Avatar Kyoshi loomed, the world’s longest shadow.

I smiled, I nodded, and I didn’t say a thing. “Community,” I said, without really grasping their intended meaning of the word, but it sounded nice enough. I had to play it safe, you see? I hadn’t planned on staying to the end of the semester, and that meant throwing myself into it. Full enthusiasm. I’d stick to the rules: up bright and early, of course. A wind-up alarm clock I’d used back in the circus was set for exactly six-thirty for morning practice at seven o’clock sharp. I’d put on my uniform, neat and ironed out the night before (and I liked to imagine Suki, our dear Captain, would be very proud), without a complaint.

Suki, it turned out, was neither the prissy cheerleader nor the demented drill sergeant, but boy, that didn’t mean she didn’t work us hard. We’d line up bleary-eyed on the lawn as the sun began to edge over the horizon, cut through the trees and speckle the grass, and you know, it’s one of those moments where if it weren’t for the total lack of amenities and four-hour commute and the fact there’s not a single upmarket Yu Dao style fusion restaurant within a five kilometre radius, you’d tell yourself, actually, you _would_ love a house in the country, that they _were_ right about the air being fresh out here, clearer, more real. You know, there were times I even thought I _liked_ it.

I remember the day she first gave the new recruits our fans. I was smaller than the rest of them, despite being older, and how that was another way I didn’t quite fit. I remember the dewdrops fresh on the lawns that morning, and how it was almost, but not quite cold enough to frost – winter was so close. I remember the way the morning light seemed to almost glint off the edge of them as she opened them to demonstrate.

“No pom-poms, then?” I’d said moments before, thinking myself clever, giving a sugar-sweet smile to Suki like an aside. I heard at least one _tch_ from the senior girls besides her. Team Captain, to her credit, ignored it.

“Well, fans are more traditional here. And they hold certain advantages.”

“Oh, that sounds great!” I said, and leaned closer. “What kinds of advantages?”

She raised an eyebrow at my smile. When she pulled out one of her own fans from her belt, offering the handle in my direction, she had a clever smile of her own on her face. 

I took it with care into my own hands. It wasn’t made of heavy metal, but instead, lightweight wood: the spine of the fan was light as bamboo, with a carved inscription running along the side. At its base, a string of beads, deep green and copper and some even chalky blue, topped off with a tassel, had been hooked on to a small hoop. The front of its slats were coated in some kind of bronze that had been polished and clearly cared for, and I could just picture Suki with this dinky bottle of polish and a cloth, rubbing each one assiduously, and I had to hold in a laugh. The back, though, that’s what surprised me.

“Feather light, see? They’re not real war fans, but they’re excellent for performance – they feel just like an extension of your arm.”

The back was painted so delicately. The beginnings of a scene, in soft ambers and greens, with the fabled Kyoshi stood tall as a wall and a face painted like a frown on the right, but what drew my attention was the group of young ladies following her. Some had braids and others with beads woven in their hair and some with no hair at all; some wore sandals and some with laced boots and even one or two barefoot. They stood proud, in bolder and firmer brushstrokes, and they too carried golden fans that they held like beacons, with the sea twirling by their feet and the green of the island rising up to their shoulders. There were lots of faces, each different, but the same: red and white, red and white.

 _Wow_. I wanted to say the word, but no sound came out, and someone else had started speaking instead of me. Maybe it was Suki again.

“We get the local artists in the village to decorate our fans. It’s another tradition of ours. Helps keep the bonds between the school and the village close, since we’re all one community, you know.”

But I wasn’t really listening. I kept thinking about all those faces, _red and white._ And really, I should have thanked her for showing it to me. Asked her who made these beautiful fans, and if I could meet them. But I kept seeing the faces, different and the same, beginning to clash into each other. Red and white. 

“Ty Lee? You good?”

Suki was looking at me again, with a smile on her face, but it felt closer to a wince and her eyes crinkled up, in a way that later, I’d know was concern. I saw her hand, extended towards me.

“Yeah! Just peachy.”

I closed the fan and gave it back to her. I smiled like I was weightless. 

There was a moment, where I thought Suki was gonna call my bluff, and call me the liar that I was. But she gave me a quick grin and just elbowed me, quickly, before she called out the other girls to get ready, _come on guys, Ty Lee’s been waiting here for at least ten minutes_. Practice had begun, and I could clear my head like I was hanging upside-down from a railing for twenty-five minutes. 

It was freeing, despite all the restrictions. You know what it’s like, when your heart gets all pumped up, and it doesn’t matter that you’re out in the cold, the wind racing behind you, because the sun is just breaking through the clouds and you feel the rush to your head, and you remember what you _love_ . I loved the big swooping movements that the fans could make. I loved the sense of my body getting ready to run, as I sprung across the field. I loved the sense of flying through the air, it almost made me forget I didn’t have wings. I loved being able to sing my lungs out, and chant: _Warriors, Warriors, Warriors._ Suki would call out and I would echo, echo, _echo_. Suki would grin, grin, _grin,_ and I’d smile back, wide as the sky, smile so hard that it felt genuine.

In the rush, I could almost forget what I saw in the quiet moments, looking into long mirrors that stretched along the walls. Replicas and matching sets. I was good at ignoring what was uncomfortable, though, when I pushed myself into an uncomfortable position. It was what made me such a good acrobat. I’d squeeze myself into a place I shouldn’t, and watch her move instead.

The best days were always the ones where I’d somehow manage to catch her out. I’d imitate Suki exactly, see. Every movement. And her face would turn this _perfect_ shade of red every time I replicated the slight half-second she might be off her footwork, or that less than perfect landing, and she’d tried, oh she tried _so hard_ not to scowl at me. I’d always respond by giving her what was missing: a pretty little smile. She had her little retaliation while telling the girls about all these back-breaking moves I’d learned to perform on a tightrope, as she caught my eye again, and said:

“I think Ty Lee should demonstrate.” 

She said it, with this knowing smile, like she was holding a secret. 

I was ready, though.

“I’d _love_ to.”

See, I didn’t _mean_ to get so involved, but when she put it like that, really, how _couldn’t_ I? She looked at me like a challenge, and I didn’t want to say no. So I’d demonstrate to all the girls, as Suki told them, _look at how her legs move, look at how her arms are shaped, look at her, look at her._ And once it had finished, I didn’t want it to stop. I found myself hanging around afterwards, while she was putting away practice fans by herself while Hotene gossiped to Yuka about the new cohort, and I told her _how much fun_ I had (and it wasn’t really a lie), tell her that I’d _love_ to help out more (and it wasn’t really a lie), and if there was really anything more I could possibly do, actually? 

It struck me again, that she looked so surprised. Had nobody ever offered before? Was this so unexpected, from a fancy Caldera import turned runaway circus freak? She couldn’t have known, there was no way – but it struck me then and it’d strike me later: she was taking a gamble on me. But before I could think about it any longer, all I saw was that smile, that wide smile spread gentle across her face. Without meaning to, I felt my mouth take the same shape. 

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, Ty Lee. I’d love your help.”

So I got involved. I’d demonstrate again, and I’d try not to think: Suki is watching me, she’s watching _me_ , because I wouldn’t be able to wipe the smile off my face, and she’d ask me, later, hey, what’s so funny? And I wouldn’t be able to tell her, because I was the joke. I’d then pair off with some of the fresh recruits, spot check their back handsprings, giving them tips and pointers like I actually _had_ been hanging off trapezes for the past three years. Afterwards, Suki would ask me to stay behind, and while we’d pack away the practice mats together and she’d ask gently about their progress, how do you think Jun is coming along, what about Mei Hui, do you think she could do this sequence, or that move, or is she struggling with the basics? She’d ask after every girl on the team she hadn’t seen, their strengths and their weaknesses, how well they worked together, how well they _didn’t_ work together. I’d offer my input, including criticism with a ‘well…’ and a slight giggle, but she didn’t share the laugh. She was serious, sincere, and interested. 

She cared, that was the thing. She really did care, and it surprised me every time. 

After we finished, we’d walk back to class together, sometimes with Yuka, sometimes with Hotene, but sometimes just by ourselves, wandering past these bare cherry trees that had already shed all of their leaves, and I wondered just how I’d fooled myself into belonging here. But then Suki would nudge me again, shoulder to shoulder, and the thought would vanish. Sometimes we’d just walk quietly, in the same step, while the birds sung to the wind. Sometimes we’d laugh, and sometimes we’d have those _water is wet_ type arguments where we’d spend the whole of the walk back bickering and later, I’d pull out a pink page from my favourite notebook, to pass her a scribbled note, _of course water is wet, it’s surrounded by water_. I’d watch her brows scrunch up and her face pout and I’d try not to laugh, while everyone else was trying not to fall asleep listening to a classmate read out lines of Shu’s burning, feverish passion in an overblown Ba Sing Se-style adaptation of the classic tale in the most monotone voice imaginable, thinking they'd prefer weaving classes a thousand times more than this.

Then there were times where Suki tried to get thoughtful.

“Everything’s peachy. _Peachy_.” She popped the p with her lips. “You keep saying that.” 

“Yeah. Like _super good._ Extra super good.”

“I mean, yeah. Just… why peaches?”

I stopped.

“Oh. You... don’t _like_ peaches?”

“Oh no – I mean, _yes, I mean,”_ she said, eyes wide, suddenly, like I’d caught her out again. “I… I _love_ them, they’re my favourite, but you know, they’re just _such_ a mess to eat.” She shrugged. “And yeah, I get it, no sweet reward without a bit of hard work, huh? But you’d think they’d choose something easier to peel for the metaphor.” 

She paused for just a moment. Long enough to hear the wind sail through the air, to rustle what leaves were left on the trees. Long enough for a bird to caw. 

“I suppose everything’s clementine doesn’t feel as catchy.”

“Sweet and easy to peel,” I said. “It fits better, I suppose.”

“Nah, it doesn’t. I’d rather say everything’s lemony.”

 _“Lemony?”_ I made a face. “Ew, Suki, lemons aren’t even _sweet._ ”

“Stop being a hater. Hmm,” she put a finger on her chin. “What about… everything’s pomegranate… y? No wait, that sucks–”

I laughed at her. _Dork._

She tried to swat me with her bag.

I was too quick, though.

She chased me around the grounds, while I was squealing and laughing and screaming because I was far too stubborn to know when to let something go. I stumbled back to class in a state: hair mussed up, shoes caked in mud, out-of-breath, ten minutes late. When I took my place, the girl behind me, who always colour-coordinated her stationery for each day of the week, covered her mouth as she snickered. The teacher merely sighed.

I wondered if I was a bad influence. And perhaps I should have known to just stay away. But there were times where I’d catch her in the hallways, from afar, laughing at a joke – she was always surrounded by people, see, by classmates and squad members and girls I didn’t even recognise and people from the village and even the Director herself. And part of me that just kept thinking: what could I do to see that again? What could I do to bring that to her face? I wanted to see every face she could make. I wanted to see her smile and I wanted to see her laugh and I wanted to see her cheeks turn strawberry pink when she got flustered and I wanted her to scowl, I wanted her to really scowl at me, to see her look at me like I was something wicked. I wanted to get closer.

I knew it wasn’t normal and it wasn’t right. Normal girls wore matching clothes and matching shoes without a school rule saying so. Normal girls gossiped about boy band exports from Ba Sing Se talent contests and put up glossy posters from magazines full of ex-royal gossip and complained about visits to the matchmaker that their parents _still_ made them sit through, how _old-fashioned,_ while wearing the same shade of cherry red on their lips, laid on a little too thick, and got on their teeth when they bit their bottom lip. Normal girls didn’t _notice_ the colours or shapes of other girls’ mouths.

But I always did like to play with fire. And I got involved enough that I almost forgot about slipping away. I got involved enough that I knew that Jun had a bad sense of timing and that Mei Hui had a wonky leg, that Yuka missed the spicy noodle bars you’d find in the fancy markets in middle-ring Ba Sing Se and that Hotene, one of the few islanders at school, more than anything, loved the first snow, even more than the seaweed kimchi her dad, a mainlander, liked to make in the winter. I got involved enough that when Suki slipped a sticky note saying: _let’s discuss routines more. meet me by the bay, 16.45?_ I spent far too long fussing over my hair ribbons, enough that I could imagine a snide little voice between red lips saying: _really? Her?_

She was there on the dot, with a plastic thermos full of soup and a hand-me down coat and clashing brown and yellow scarves I couldn’t find it in me to say a single mean word about, because really, that was just so _Suki._ We walked along the beach where on the rough days, you’d see little fishing boats painted blues and greens with piles and piles of nets bob up and down on the water, and that’s if you could see through the fog, but on the softer days with clear skies and calm waters, the bay was empty, and it was perfect for skimming stones. We’d speak through the sequences as we tossed stones out, and hers would skim just a little bit further, a little bit smoother.

“How are you _so_ good at this? It's just, ugh!" I almost kicked a stone. "Unfair!"

Suki grinned, as I tried to bite my frustration into something pretty. “That’s because _you’re_ holding back. Come on. You can do better.”

i blinked. “I’m not?” I said. It was a question, perhaps to myself. She gave me a pointed look. “What? I’m _not. Suuuki, come on!”_

She looked a little too satisfied, and started goading me. _Oh, Come on Ty Lee. What are you so afraid of? The Unagi? You’re not an elephant koi, you’re too small to be fish food! You’ve got no reason to hold back, come on, come on–_

I wanted, more than anything, for the next stone I’d toss out would skid twice as far as hers, and for that satisfied smile to vanish. But I couldn't. I dropped the stone. Instead, I almost shoved her into the waves. She’d splash me right back with cold saltwater, and I’d almost scream with laughter, smiling wider than the moon.

Later, we’d sit on the rocks, watching the sky begin to pink. I’d been trying to spot planes flying overhead, or even a rare bison, as Suki had told me that you’d sometimes catch a rare glimpse of them, flying from south-west to north-east. 

“I wasn’t allowed on any of the sports teams, when I first got here,” she began. “Eight years ago. I was miserable. And I lashed out.”

I had honestly thought Suki had popped out of one of those oysters they sell at the village market. Yokoyan to the core. I felt my mouth fill with the only stupid question I could think of.

“Why didn’t you run?”

“Oh, you think I didn’t try?” She gave me a challenging glance. “Koko didn’t give up on me, though. She showed me those pictures of the old warriors, the last _real_ ones, before _the treaty_ came into force. There’s a whole collection of them that she keeps in her office, in this cabinet by her desk.”

It all came down to _the treaty_ , didn’t it? It filled those fuzzy memories of backtalk at family dinners, and I couldn’t remember what they said but it was how they spoke _,_ like it was this ugly, distasteful thing, that stuck. I’d been too busy trying to unpick the pink embroidery on my sleeves or making shapes from the ceiling tiles to pay much more attention, not until I left _._ It was different, the way people on the road, travellers and migrants and merchants said the words: _the treaty._ It held more spite, somehow, even though I’d always been told before how much it favoured _them_ (the little people). I had supposed it was like it was the bitterest of medicines: no more war – not in the Earth Kingdom, not for half a century – just colonies cut out of the northern provinces like jigsaw puzzle pieces. An annexation here, a partition here. I suppose that had an effect on Yokoya too. There weren’t any _Kyoshi_ Warriors any more after all, were there? 

“I… just became obsessed, almost. With this the idea of bringing them back, somehow. Of having _our own_ warriors again. And I’d spend every evening holed up in the library, looking up obscure types of folk dances or forgotten martial arts, y’know, trying to find _something_ that wouldn’t break the non-combatant clause. And I was determined, absolutely determined, to see it through.”

She bit her cheek. The sea hissed gently behind us. 

“What happened next?” I asked.

“Cheerleading happened.” She paused, with a grin, teasing. “Oh, haven’t you heard of it?”

I’d heard of it. I’d heard more than enough rolling percussion and glitter-gold fireworks and fanfare for fallen regimes and mechanical rounds of applause at girls in uniforms that looked like toy soldiers. And if I thought hard enough, I could still recall the unexpected softness of her hand touching my shoulder, a sharp whisper in my ear: _Ty Lee._

“I mean,” and she took this airy tone, clearly false. “Oh, _you know_ , those big fancy acrobatic parades _for the nations,_ as they say, that took over the military parades? The ones they broadcast _everywhere_ on TV, each summer solstice, and you can’t quite avoid it, as much as you try, since there's nothing else on?”

“Nope,” I said, grinning. “Never heard of it.”

The idea of never having heard of cheerleading felt as weird as never having heard of fire-flakes.

“Cheerleading took over my life. I became completely obsessed, and I just fell down this rabbit hole, just watching video after video after video… And they’ve diversified a _bunch_ in recent years, you know, all the different islands have their own styles, it’s all got these roots in folk dances and martial arts you wouldn’t believe, half of it was _suppressed_ under the military regime and…” She stopped, suddenly, as if she was aware of what she was saying. Maybe she expected she’d be interrupted. “I think Koko thought I was crazy, at first, though. Everyone did.”

I would have thought she was crazy, too. I thought of a determined twelve year old Suki, up to her knees in dog-eared library books, starting an cheerleading team based on the concept of a mythical dead group of martial artists wearing full faces of Ba Sing Se opera make-up. I know I’d have laughed. I’d have poked fun until there were more holes than fabric. Maybe that made me the clown.

“I think there’s something funny about that. Making something that’s theirs, ours. That’s why I always try to put a bit of Yokoyan folk dance into the routines, when I can. That’s why we put on performances for the villagers, that’s why we know them all by name. If we’re going to have our own ‘cheerleaders’, it’d be in our own way, in our own style, in our own colours. I want to show the world who we are. I want to show the world what it means to be Yokoyan.”

The sea still hissed, gently, behind our heads, as the waves began to lap against the rocks we’d perched on. 

“You know, they didn’t let us perform at competitions, until this year.”

I didn’t hide a frown. “I didn’t know that.”

“Not because we weren’t good enough,” she qualified. “We are. We _absolutely_ are. But they didn’t want to declare what region we belonged to. So we couldn’t get the funding grants that come with that. Comes with being contested territory.”

I swallowed, and nodded. It was hard not to notice how all the paperwork up at the school was in at least three languages – and only one of them was the same as what you’d hear fisherwomen gossiping in as they untangled their nets, were in the names painted on the sides of their boats, or of their children. It was hard not to notice this weary note of disappointment, this distance, which came with the word _Ba Sing Se._ Even _Earth Kingdom_ was spoken as a joke: and in the circus troupe they used to make those jokes, you know, about the falling Kingdom with twelve capitals and six dozen kings, but there was none of that humour here. Just bitterness.

“You know Koko,” said Suki, “The Director. She fought really hard to get the school back in the island’s hands. The Sei’naka clan tried to claim the academy, even the whole _island_ was theirs since Kyoshi’s direct line died out. Some of them still do.” 

It was all sincere. Everything she was saying was sincere. And I had really no idea what to say to that. That was the only moment I really doubted.

“I’m telling you this,” Suki said, “Since people will try to ask questions. Why you’re with us. What we represent. Whether it’s a ‘statement’.” She looked at me firmly. “... and, I know it’s still early days, but we really do want you to come with us to Regionals, Ty Lee.”

I should have said no.

But instead, I threw my arms around her. 

I had gotten involved enough that when it came to Regionals, and that there was no question about whether I’d go, and the word _yes_ had never been easier. I’d gotten involved enough that when Suki was peering at this big chunky monitor in the library, checking the details for twenty-four tickets, all the way from Yokoya Village up to Omashu, I was there, hovering at her shoulder, as she pressed ‘confirm’. I was there, with half a dozen other girls, and it was me who bounced up on my feet to pull them into the biggest hug, trying not to float away with excitement.

_“We’re going to Omashu!”_

And they all laughed with me.

I really let myself get carried away, didn’t I? 

_“Hey, where’s Ty Lee?”_

Because I almost forgot. Right up until dress rehearsal. 

_“Have you seen Ty Lee?”_

See, in the last months of the year, as the sunlight fell from the sky, the Warriors would put on performances for the village, in traditional dress. They’d string up banners for us, ring bells, bash drums. And we’d come out in long skirts and full sleeves and thick pigment painted on a face, red and white, that couldn’t really be called war paint any longer, not really, there weren’t any wars left to fight, even if the sight of it got your heart racing. 

_“Ty Lee? Hey, is anyone there?”_

I stood in front of a bathroom mirror. I could hear a flute whistle, and a drum beat, soft and fresh. I had cut my face in half with a paintbrush: one half was me, Ty Lee, looking behind my shoulder. The other half belong to a person who I couldn’t quite recognise.

“Ty Lee?”

I tried to remember what was me and mine and my own. Half of my name was mine and my own: a character by itself, unique to me. But it was only half: only half of me.

“Oh, hey Ty Lee! _There_ you are.” Perhaps there was a smile, of relief. “You scared me, just for a second there, I–”

Only half of me.

“Hey, Ty Lee,” she said, and it was so soft.

Behind me, I knew it was Suki. I knew it was her face, her soft jaw and shy lips painted a deep smouldering red and the rest of it this chalky white, that felt like a spirit’s touch, a spirit’s face. I knew it was Suki, behind me, who brushed my shoulder with her hand.

I almost reached up to touch her fingertips.

“Hey, Ty Lee? Hey, what’s wrong?”

There was that sinking feeling.

Because no matter what looked at me in the mirror, what I saw was a girl in red and black. _Ty Lee,_ a girl in red and black was saying. _Ty Lee, there’s no need to be nervous,_ a whisper sharp and soft, like the uncomfortable fit of another uniform clasped around my waist too tight, as the drums rolled on tightly behind me, and I’d been bouncing on my feet, too much again, she’d told me my shoes would wear out before I’d ever complete the routine, was the thought running through my head as her hand clasped my shoulder. _You were born ready for this,_ she had said.

“Ty Lee, you don’t have to – hey, _hey,”_ and it was soft, those words, as she now held onto my shoulder, “It’s okay, it’s really–”

I felt my lip begin to tremble.

“Ty Lee, it’s okay, I _promise–_ ”

I looked into the mirror, and saw in myself, a face that wasn’t mine.

“It’s okay, you know, we don’t have to do this–”

I looked into the mirror, and saw behind me, another face that I was supposed to wear, another uniform I was supposed to fit, another girl that I couldn’t be and couldn’t have and couldn’t hold, not much more for a second.

“–I’ll understand, here–”

She squeezed my shoulder softly.

_Ty Lee. Don't disappoint me._

And it happened just so – so fast, it was just so overwhelming, you know, I could see me but it wasn’t me, I was someone else, in someone else’s clothing, and it was just – _wrong,_ all of this was just so _wrong,_ and yet it was exactly what I’d been told I should be, the fit of a uniform, a matching set, and yet –

I panicked.

When I ran out of the bathroom, eyes running, _red and red and red_ , I couldn’t tell the difference, really, between wide red-tiled rooftops of the Caldera brimming with banners, and a home-made stage in Yokoya with blue and green lanterns strung between bare trees. I couldn’t tell the difference between the villagers and the vague shapes of a looming crowd, I couldn’t tell the differences between my teammates, between Yuka or Hotene, the faces all blurred up into rough shapes, _red and red and red_. It all looked the same. 

Except their mouths. I always noticed the exact shape and colour of their mouths. That exact shade of red – bold, no, _courageous,_ she would have called it. Pigment laid on too thick.

I should have known I’d never fit. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


I didn’t go to practice that day.

Or the next.

I tried not to go the day after, but Yuka and Hotene stormed into my room and told me that I had absolutely no choice. 

_“Ty Lee.”_

It was an accusation in the shape of my name. I’d crawled beneath the covers: I wasn’t going, and it didn’t matter what they said. I heard Hotene sigh, but Yuka tried to rip the covers straight off me. 

“I can’t _believe_ you’re being so selfish!”

“Yuka–”

“Suki is _counting on you._ We’re _all counting on you.”_

I pulled the covers tighter.

“Yuka, stop. If she doesn’t want to come, she doesn’t want to–”

“I am _not_ missing out on my last and _only_ chance at the nationals, because of her–”

_“Yuka!”_

She slammed the door behind her. Hotene sighed, again, and it felt heavier this time. “She’s worried about you. She just doesn’t want to say it to your face.”

I lay there, beneath the weight of the blankets and the creeping sense of guilt, for five minutes. The sun came in through the wrong window, and you couldn’t hear the birds, from where I was. Everything just felt sort of empty.

I stood up. You know, I tried to put on my pristine green uniform, ironed the way Suki might like. I’d brushed my hair so there wasn’t a single tangle, and pulled it into a braid, and tied it all off with a ribbon, the same colour as everything else. I tried to smile. But when I looked in the mirror, something in me crumpled. I couldn’t leave like this. I couldn’t see what part of this was me.

I should have known. I should have known it’d end in disappointment.

But I was too stubborn for my own good. I bit my lip, got on my knees, and scoured around every last corner of every drawer, throwing green and gold all over the floor for even just a stocking or a scrunchie or a bracelet or just _something,_ something from before that I hadn’t thrown out, tossed away, discarded, because all I’d ever told myself was that I knew better than to keep favourites, to clutch onto things, when my life was like the wind, I knew better than to collect things like pressed flowers caught between turning pages when it was all going to be burned anyway, but why hadn’t I clung onto something, _anything_ from before–

Then I remembered the cardboard box under my bed.

* * *

Maybe if I’d soared out of my room, uniform all askew with a bright fanfare playing from a portable speaker behind me, a camera chasing my back, I’d have caught her on time. But in the end, I didn't catch her. She’d already packed away all the boxes of practice fans. The image of her packing things away and putting away boxes alone, replayed in my head, as I shuffled back to change back into my school uniform in an empty locker room with too many mirrors. I was fifteen minutes late.

I’d forgotten to bring a spare change of shoes. 

The teacher gave me a quiet look between the lines of a lecture, and I couldn’t tell if it was pitying, as the girl behind me snickered again, but it all felt like background static, the rumble of a drum, or a movie soundtrack, rather than a sound. I clicked my heels together; I closed my eyes. I wasn’t here, not really. I was chasing the tide along a stormy shoreline, still trying to catch her. I imagined tossing out a stone from the shore that skimmed all the way to the horizon, further than either of us could reach. I imagined the shape of her smile as she told me: _well done_.

When the bell chimed, I rushed out of the school grounds, and ran to the bay without stopping. I didn’t even grab a coat.

It was cloudy that day, and the sea rumbled in, swallowing the beach up in high tides. I hadn’t known she’d be there – it was just a hunch, really. A little crazy – and yet there I found her, looking out towards the ocean. She was leaning against the railing high above it, up on the cliff-side, and when a slip of sun would come out, she’d almost look like a painting, even in her hand-me-down coat. I tried to hold in a gasp, a smile, anything, but instead it all tumbled out:

_“Suki!”_

And as she spun around her face brightened all up, when she saw me, and how much I wanted to cling on to that smile, then.

“Ty Lee?” She called out, from above. “Where’s your coat? Aren’t you cold? Wait – what happened to your shoes?" 

She would ask, wouldn't she? See, I was wearing my old sneakers. You know, my old pale pink sneakers, whose left sides were doodled all over in glitter metallic marker in shapes and patterns that didn’t repeat, and whose right sides were covered with pink plastic stickers in the shape of little stars and hearts that had almost peeled off, whose soles were worn, sides were creased, whose thread was beginning to fray, but had lasted the years? Those ones. I was wearing my old sneakers, and I felt just a bit more like me.

“I like these more,” I said, calling back, laughing. “They’re my favourite colour!”

“Yeah, I know. They suit you!"

I was grinning. The wind was blowing fierce behind me, a green ribbon almost falling out of my hair, knees wobbling and little hairs along my arms standing on end because I'd left my coat back in my room. And I was grinning, because there she was. There was _Suki._

I rushed up the steps towards her, and practically threw myself into her arms.

“Suki, I am, so, so _so_ sorry, I–”

“No – that’s not why – you don’t have to apologise, it’s really okay–”

“No, I do! I really _am_ sorry! I don’t know what came over me, but it’s not–”

“It’s really fine, Ty Lee, I promise, it’s–”

“I _hurt_ you, Suki. That’s not okay.”

And I pulled away, then, but kept hold of my hands in hers, and gave them a squeeze. She looked away from me. There was just a sliver of concealer around her eye, slight enough not to notice from a distance. Anyone up close, though, could tell there was something painful under that.

“You’ve got a decent right jab. Caught me completely off guard. You could work on your stance though.”

_“Suki.”_

“Hey, I’m serious. Did you know I used to pick fights with all the other kids, before I got shipped over here? I wasn’t what you’d exactly call a model child.” She gave me that smile, again, that I was now learning, was more of a wince. “And I know you didn’t mean to hurt me. I know that.”

I stared at her. I almost let go of her hands.

“But I understand… I don’t know what happened, exactly. I’m here, if you want to talk, but, I just want to say... if you need to back out, I get it. I can smooth it over with Koko, I’m sure–”

This was the moment I should have told her. This was the moment where I should have said _I absolutely cannot do this._ This was the way out I’d wanted, wasn’t it? I knew I couldn’t really belong here. I hadn’t intended on lingering around, and the sketch of that plan still had shape at the back of my mind. It was dangerous, all of this. Her smiles and looks and stray glances that I had stopped keeping a careful count of. Every second that my hands were wrapped around hers were dangerous.

“I’m still going,” I said. “I’m going to catch-up with everything we missed. I’m going to do _everything_ to prove myself to the team–”

“Ty Lee, you really don’t have to–”

“I’m _coming_ to Regionals,” I said, firm. _“Of course_ I’m coming to Regionals. You couldn’t leave me behind even if you _wanted to.”_

“Ty Lee–”

“I’m _serious,_ okay?”

And it wasn’t a lie.

If I could go back in time, I would have taken a camera with me. I wish I could have taken a picture of her (of us). That broad, brilliant smile, she gave me. She practically beamed (and so did I). And I couldn’t help it. I threw my arms around her (but she held me there, softly), and she was beaming and I was beginning to cry because I couldn’t leave her, not now, the thought felt almost impossible in that moment.

“Okay,” she said, not letting go. “Okay. We’ll make it work.”

Yuka was right. I was so selfish.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **references:**  
>  **attush** \- traditional material used to make Ainu clothing (see sources [[1]](https://www.tota.world/article/58/) and [[2]](https://garlandmag.com/article/ainu-textiles/) \- very interesting, both articles!). The Kyoshi Islanders in design draw on Ainu people and their clothing, so this is something I really did want to reference.  
>  **Koko** \- the name of Kyoshi's daughter who inherits governorship of the island, as well as a child on Kyoshi Island we meet in the show well over 100 years later. I imagine it's a popular name for islanders, even if it's not a native Yokoyan name.  
>  **seaweed kimchi** \- a type of kimchi made in Yokoya/Kyoshi Island, according to the Kyoshi Novels. Since kimchi is of course a Korean dish, and I don't want to conflate Ainu people with Korean people, I added the detail that Hotene's father was a mainlander, with the implication it's a fusion dish.  
>  **Sei'naka clan** \- the Fire Nation clan that Rangi Sei'naka belonged to. Rangi was Kyoshi's firebending tutor & life-long partner.  
>  **Yu Dao** \- the Earth Kingdom name for Republic City, prior to it and the former Fire Nation colonies seceeding.
> 
> yeah i'm just casually dropping some realpolitik into a gay cheerleader movie AU wbu.
> 
> Seriously: had fun trying to explore what a curriculum might look like for these girls. tried to emphasise practical arts as much as academic ones, and a sense of responsibility cultivated where the students help upkeep the school & island. There's [a prison on an island in a Norwegian fjord](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bast%C3%B8y_Prison) where inmates help run farms and look after the land while also having time for leisure, a radically reformist approach that differs from most European incarnation policies - that was a touchstone in my head while writing this - and honestly, I don't think prison is too dark a comparison here, Foucault wasn't entirely wrong r.e. schools and hospitals running on institutional logic akin to prisons, and I think this especially applies to 'reform' boarding schools (which have been replaced with juvenile halls, and *are* prisons, and understood as such) on remote islands. but I also think some of this approach, with the emphasis on the practical ties into a lot of the concept of 'embodied knowledge' and learning through doing mentioned in the above source about Ainu textiles. 
> 
> Ty Lee, and many other girls, were forced to go here, and that's part of the discomfort here. But I think the approach Koko & her school takes here isn't without compassion. Suki, in some ways, is representative of that - 'Koko didn't give up on me' implies that lots of people *have* before this, and that she's found a place here.
> 
> Anyway, this doesn't stick to either movie's plot... at all! oh well. This whole chapter was just a set of training montages in my head leading to a minor climax where I wanted to describe Ty Lee adjusting in her own maladjusted way. Clearly, nothing is going to go wrong at Regionals following this :)

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!! please let me know your thoughts :0)
> 
> follow me on tumblr @ [zuzuslastbraincell](https://zuzuslastbraincell.tumblr.com/).


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